Monthly Archives: August 2012

As part of the colonial history theme I’ve been reading Barbara Crossette’s ‘Great Hill Stations of Asia’. Like me, she has been charmed by Beth Ellis’s An English Girl’s First Impressions of Burmah… and was equally puzzled about Beth’s referring … Continue reading →

I came across this little snippet this morning: For a BBC program in 1954, Sir Mortimer Wheeler tasted a reconstruction of the Tollund Man’s last supper, which turned out to be a tasteless mush. This led him to announce: “I believe … Continue reading →

I was idly surfing the web the other day and I came across a report in the Irish Times where the Prime Minister admitted erroneously claiming that Lenin had visited Ireland in the company of Michael Collins. Lenin of course … Continue reading →

Have you ever tried to buy envelopes recently? It’s a lot harder than you would expect. I’ve written before about the death of the letter, but this took me by surprise. I needed to but some plain envelopes. Most times … Continue reading →

As I’ve said before, one of the defining features of the British colonies in South East Asia was their small population size compared to the local population. For example in 1911 the European population of KL was under a 1000 … Continue reading →